Posted on 10/26/2006 11:28:10 AM PDT by aculeus
Evolution needs to get its stories straight. Constantly revising is not an answer.
Where did you get that idea?
I used my unevolved brain.
Since rocks don't need to fall of cliffs, I guess none ever have. That's what I got out of that.
I thought all vertebrates by definition had back bones. But ...
Chordates with a cartilaginous spine.
Yes! They were quite successful in finding a valuable niche and exploited it against all-comers.
Back to the books for evolutionists.
Nonsense. See my Post #17. We used this in my previously mentioned Zoology class as one of the classic anatomical lessons in the evolutionary chain of life on this planet. Evolutionists have no problem whatsoever with this organism since it once again bolsters the TOE as it represents a stepping-stone on the way to man.
First: They represent the evolutionary link between the Invertebrate and Vertebrate Phyla since they have a primitive (cartilage) backbone.
Second: A further common ancestor went on to become the sharks and rays, which eventually evolved into fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, primates, man.
Since a lamprey didn't need to evolve this means that humans didn't either. That's what I get out of this.
Extremely poor logic [*LOL*]. I suggest, much the same as I took long ago, a Year-long Zoology course to open your mind to the wonders of Evolution.
Hope this helps. Best of luck with your coursework!
No reason? No reason? So you are implying evolution is intellegently directed.
A 'Living Fossil': 360 Million-year-old Fish Hasn't Evolved Much
And why hasn't it evolved much?...C'mon say it..."Because evolution is a fairy-tale."
Bill Clinton would hit it.
sure looks like an attorney to me.
No reason = no pressure on it in the form of scarce resources, competition for resources, predators, or environmental changes that influence its development. Meanwhile, mutations that have also found their own niches have evolved into present day forms of sharks, eels, etc.
Hey, don't insult Lampreys!
Two comments:
First, it's misleading to say that the lampreys "haven't evolved". Some of their descendants have a very similar shape to their remote ancestors, that's all you can say. Those descendants may well have changed in many ways that aren't reflected in their morphology, but morphology is all that the fossil record preserves.
Second, if the shape of the lamprey is sufficiently well suited for its ecological niche, evolution will necessarily act to preserve that shape. Lampreys are born all the time with a slightly different shape, but as that shape is less well suited for the niche, those "hopeful monsters" will be weeded out over time.
It really is simple, and almost obvious, if you think about it.
No. Absent any environmental factor pushing evolution in any direction, each generation of an organism will have roughly the same allele frequencies as its parent. Obviously there will be some genetic drift over time, but if the organism has a successful niche, then there's no ecological advantage to evolving.
*LOL*
"Abundant in the Northeast United States, lampreys have a sucker-like mouth with a ring of cartilage that supports the rim of the mouth. It fastens on to a living fish with its teeth, rasps at the host's soft tissues with its piston-like tongue, produces strands of mucus to trap the food and feeds on the body fluids."
Northeastern US socialists' behavior.
"First, it's misleading to say that the lampreys "haven't evolved". Some of their descendants have a very similar shape to their remote ancestors, that's all you can say. Those descendants may well have changed in many ways that aren't reflected in their morphology, but morphology is all that the fossil record preserves."
I don't know...that sounds pretty weak. Concerning the many changes you speculated about, what kind of things are you referring to? What else is there to a lamprey? There isn't much left when you take out morphology. Eye color or personality?
And think I stated correctly "hasn't changed much" not "hasn't evolved".
Sincerely.
I think a lot of people have trouble discussing this because they're going back along one line - the line from the lamprey we know today versus the fossil record of 360 million years ago. If we start from the fossil record and move forward, it's easier to describe it in terms of one line remaining relatively unchanged over time because it hasn't had much pressure to change, while other descendants have indeed shown some evolutionary influences due to mutations that have proved equally or more successful compared to the original model.
"Second, if the shape of the lamprey is sufficiently well suited for its ecological niche, evolution will necessarily act to preserve that shape. Lampreys are born all the time with a slightly different shape, but as that shape is less well suited for the niche, those "hopeful monsters" will be weeded out over time."
I sure have a hard time understanding how something could maintain an ecological niche through 360,000,000 years of climate fluctuations, catastrophic events, and extinction events.
When all you have to do is suck off of someone else's resources, you don't have to evolve much.
This also explains why liberals are still around.
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